don't hide - the snake can see you


Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, To Be a Drum (Jazz), 1996–98.

Poem For Vipers
-- by John Wieners

I sit in Lees. At 11:40 PM with
Jimmy the pusher. He teaches me
Ju Ju. Hot on the table before us
shrimp foo yong, rice and mushroom
chow yuke. Up the street under the wheels
of a strange car is his stash--The ritual.
We make it. And have made it.
For months now together after midnight.
Soon I know the fuzz will
interrupt, will arrest Jimmy and
I shall be placed on probation. The poem
does not lie to us. We lie under
its law, alive in the glamour of this hour
able to enter into the sacred places
of his dark people, who carry secrets
glassed in their eyes and hide words
under the coats of their tongue.

You Talk of Going But Don't Even Have a Suitcase
-- by John Wieners

(A series of Repetitions)

I will be an old man sometime
And will live in a dark room somewhere.

I will think of this night someplace
the rain falling on stone.

There will be no one near
no whisper on the street

only this song of old yearning
and the longing to be young

with you together on some street.

Now is the time for retreat,
This is the last chance.

This is not the last chance.
Why only yesterday I lay drugged
on the dark bed while they came
and went as the wind

and they shall come again
to bear me down into that pit
there is no returning from.

Old age, disaster, doom.

It shall be as this room.
With you by the sink, pinching your face

in the mirror.
Time is as a river

and I shall forget this night,
its joy.

V: Second Avenue (Manhattan)
-- by Bruna Mori

a man on the corner is smoking the man smoking on the corner at the newsstand the man at the corner newsstand is smoking in night in night smoking at the newsstand is the man on the corner with a fedora on a corner smoking in New York is the man on the corner in the cold see his breath in the cold fedora on a newsstand corner fedora breath on a night in New York corner newsstand with breath of the newsstand breath cigarette fedora warming the night with the newsstand smoke of breath and cigarette illuminated in lamplight of newsstand and the moon fedora in lamplight smoking cigarette and breath warming



REMINDER: The Foreign Press plays Velvet Lounge (9th & U NW, WDC) tonight with Phil Duarte and Ohsees. 9pm.